Looks like Cree’s pint sized powerhouse XM-L LED is getting some competition this month in the form of the new Luxeon M from Philips Lumileds. Cree and Philips have historically played the one-upmanship game for as long as we can remember, so it wasn’t really all that surprising that they were working on something to compete with Cree’s king of the hill. What they came up with the Luxeon M is different, but good.

As you can plainly see from the above image, the Luxeon M is a quad die setup. The dies are run in series, so the total forward voltage for the LED is 11.2v on average. As a result, the current range tops out at 1050mA, unlike the XM-L that tops out at 3000mA. This actually has the advantage of being able to take the increased output with existing drivers. AC and DC drivers with output current over 1.5A aren’t all that common, especially with lower voltage ranges, so this LED will be easier to get setup.

For output, the Luxeon M is hitting an average of 905lm at 700mA (the test current used for binning), and tops out at almost 1200lm when driven at the maximum rated current. At 700mA, this actually puts the Luxeon M about 120lm ahead of the XM-L at the same wattage (~7.84W).

Seeing as this is an LED targeted at general lighting applications (sorry, no aquarium specific color temperatures here ), color temperatures are rated at 4000K and 5700K. There may be more options available in the near future, but these should tide most people over for DIY builds.

Luxeon M emitters are available to the market as we speak, but so far only unmounted. The solder pad setup is a little different than other LEDs on the market, so it may be a few weeks for mounted options to become available. Keep your eyes peeled to the usual sources for Luxeon LEDs for them to become available.